Strange Accusations
Chapter: Season Three
Characters: Mike Mearls, Monte Cook
Here’s hoping Monte Cook and Mike Mearls are have a sense of humor (which I imagine they do).
The time is upon us: 5th-edition D&D (or D&D-Next as codenamed by WotC) is coming.
I am putting together a full blog post on the announcement but my short hand opinion is this: Bring it on
COMMENTERS: How did the announcement sit with you? Are you ready/excited for the next edition of D&D?
Nice.
And as far as 5e, I’m not really the target demographic anymore. I only play 4e when I step in as the backup GM at the local Encounters game, so I don’t really have a strong opinion. I will say that I want WotC to succeed with 5e (I’ve even started a series of humble suggestion posts on my blog) so I hope that it does well.
At first I was mightily annoyed. But then my naturally optimism kicked in and now I’m hoping that it lives up to what they’re trying to do.
I’m optimistic. They’re saying the right things (so far! Fingers crossed) and they’ve got a good team… I’m looking forward to seeing what they do.
Remarkably, the announcement didn’t stop me from ordering Heroes of the Feywild today… Go figure.
No thanks. The 2ed rules work for the groups I dm when we play d&d. Usually we play W.O.D. stuff because the mechanics are easier and the storyteller has more latitude.
Broodax in D&D-Nex: Comfirmed!
( http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/05/04 )
WOTC has lost me as a customer, so D&D next is flying well under my radar.
It adds another phase onto my Doctor Strangeroll campaign. Can the players take it FIVE ways? We shall see….
I just got into playing D&D this recent October (been interested for a while, though), and we play 4ed. I cant comment on it compared to other editions because obviously I never played 3.5 or anything, but I enjoy 4ed. There are things I would have wanted changed, but it isn’t really anything game breaking for me or anything that cant be adjusted with house ruling. Obviously it isnt something EVERYONE will enjoy, but as someone who has wanted to get into D&D and finally got the chance, I enjoy it. The great thing is that nobody is forced to play 4ed since there are still people playing 3.5 out there.
Im eager to see what 5ed brings. I cant say what exactly I’d like to see outside an addition of feats and powers and such (I go ‘ooh la la’ at new things). Some of the suggestions I saw on the D&D forums from the Wizards site I thought to be rather crazy, though (get rid of classes/races, get rid of the d20 system for attacks and such).
As long as 5ed brings you more comic fuel, Brian!
I got into RPGs by buying books and reading them and having no one to play with until I got to college. I bought Gurps 4e, Cyberpunk 2020, and the LOTR movie rpg books all on whims. I’ve played WOD in short, and been playing 4e for about a year.
A lot of the beefs I hear leveled against 4e by “veteran” players seem really inconsequential to me. IT was very different, but a game should grow and change while remaining true to the core concept if it wants to survivie. I think 4e did that and while the mechanics did focus heavily on combat, you can still have skill tests, puzzle challenges, diplomacy challenges (think Deus Ex: Human Revolution) and anything you can think of. The combat is “gamier” but that helps and it adds a level for people like me who like roleplay but really like a lot of tactics in their rollplay.
Hopefully 5e keeps a lot of the combat mechanics from 4e but cleans up 4e class issues and feat taxes. If it builds on the combat rules foundation of 4e then it could easily expand into more non-combat situations without driving up the price for books.
WotC lost me as a customer too long ago for me to care very much, to be honest. Across all their products, they seem to be developing a sense of “planned obsolescence” that is starting to rival the software industry. Anybody ready for a new D&D edition every year or two?
Oh well, WotC’s loss is Paizo’s gain. Pathfinder allowed me to use my extensive library of 3.0 & 3.5 material while still adding enough “new & shiny” to appeal to some of the newer gamers in my groups.
Gotta say, I’m cautiously optimistic about 5e. I love the designers, but the direction they may be forced to move the game may not be my cup of tea. Once they start sending info for beta, I’ll look at it. If I like it I’ll run a couple of games, if I don’t I won’t.
I’ll second that Pathfinder is my current system of choice, with FantasyCraft (from Crafty Games) being my very close/merging with first place. After that, I go to other systems entirely…
Excitedly optimistic, also ready to campaign for you to get in on the artwork if they do another “Player’s Guide” for the new edition. If not, they should at least hire you for your kick ass cartography skills, breathe a new art style into 5e while they’re at it.
PS: Your comic made me laugh, as always.
I’m pretty pumped about it. I think it will be hilarious for all the people who started with 4e to turn into grumpy grognards. [old-man voice] “Back in 2008, we had utility powers, and we LIKED it!”
Seriously tho, it’s good that they’re adopting the Paizo model. If they can create something that will use everybody’s 3e 3.5 and Pathfinder material without too much conversion, they may just have a winner.
Meh, they lost me to Pathfinder. I’m not coming back.
D&D to me is the D&D Rules Cyclopedia and that’s that. Whatever WotC wants to do with its ‘Fantasy Role Playing Game’ is fine with me, but it’s not D&D. Oh, I signed up for the Open Beta; I want to be in on either the greatest ‘iteration’ yet, or the crash and burn of the brand. I don’t think there’ll be any middle ground on this. 😀
http://modernappendixn.blogspot.com/2012/01/5th-edition-d-already.html covers what I think WoTC can do to make the new edition good without talking about game mechanics.
I’m concerned about the new edition. I was new to tabletop D&D with 4th edition, and built up a much larger collection than was in any way necessary (or even practical) because I naively assumed that it would be valid for more than a couple of years.
While I recognise there are several distinct flaws and short-comings of 4E; I do think that having tried a reboot with Essentials at which is essentially half-way through the life-cycle, and then throwing another one at us so soon afterwards, is a bit rich.
I simply don’t have the money to invest in a new game system every 4 years, especially when they’re still releasing 4E content now! I know I’m not going to buy another 4E product again now that it’s practically been given an expiry date!
I’d feel very used and betrayed if, after just a couple years worth of campaigning in 4E, all my collection is made obsolete. I’ll be equally mad if 5E material duplicates 4E content to any large degree.
If 5E was just an overhaul of the DM / gameplay system, and you could import 4E characters, settings, and other material wholesale; then I’d be tempted to buy into it – I’m all for a more RP orientated / less mechanical system – but not at the expense of making my collection redundant – I’ve simply invested too much money at this point.
And really, for 5E to improve on 4E they really need to pull some fundamental lazy oversights back into touch. For example an economy where supplies (candles, oil-lamps, food, drink, lodgings) don’t become trivially inexpensive after the party’s first dungeon crawl; and skill checks (picking doors, climbing ropes and other acrobatic feats, etc) don’t become trivial and thus banal after a few levels. Better and more interesting weapon balance – there’s a lot of exotic weapons in the game which convey no distinctive benefits over each other.
Also more information on how to go from the “room based encounter” 4E model to living full-scale dungeons / open world areas. How to use hex-grid maps to travel, generating fully-formed random encounters, wandering monsters, etc etc.
D&D lost me completely when 4e hit, and the mechanics just seemed like a total right angle shift away from what I consider worthwhile RP and more back towards wargaming-style RP. I can see why plenty of people didn’t mind, or even preferred the new (old) style, but it wasn’t for me.
With 5e, I’m actually. I like Monte Cook’s past work, so it’ll be interesting to see what he does with it, but I also understand that he’s probably at least somewhat influenced in design choices by what WotC want the game to be, so he’s probably not going to have unilateral authority to change everything he might want to.
I’m kind of disillusioned towards gaming in general right now, though… I’d really like to see someone (be it WotC and D&D or not) come out with a new system that really excites me and gains enough momentum to actually pull in new players, rather than staying niche forever. I don’t really foresee that happening, though.
i don’t know if i’m *excited* but i’m at least curious. i’ve played 2e, 3.5e, and now a 1e + 2e plus house-rules (as it’s meant to be). whatever they create, i’ll pillage it for whatever suits my fancy.
for me to adopt the ruleset en masse it would need to be fast play (light on the core rules) and story-driven vs. minis or power/leveling up. IMHO, if WotC sorts out a fast play core ruleset that’s compatible with other editions/d20 and produces adventures, supplements, etc. that are beefy in content and fairly rules-neutral then i’ll definitely go back to buying their products.
I’ve played darn near every incarnation of D&D(not at time of release) and I’d have to say that this awesome comic of yours is probably the closest I’ll get to a WotC product is a while. Unless I’m buying it second hand to convert for Savage Worlds.
I’ll say that Mike Mearls does not have a sense of humor.
Mike Mearls doesn’t even like role-playing in his role-playing games (he hates non-combat encounters).
Basically, with all the interactions I’ve had with Mike Mearls in the last four years, I can officially say that Mike Mearls is a douche bag who likes money more than he likes pleasing fans.
I’ve actually played every edition of D&D from first all the way to 4e, having been playing for about 32 years now. All of them had some things that worked for me, and some I am glad to see gone away. My groups right now play mostly 4e, although we occasionally have a 3.5 game or a game in a different system.
Having said all this, I felt that 4e, while it can be fun with the tactics and combats that are the main part of the game, I don’t like it as much as I did 3rd and 3.5. From what I read, the next edition is going to be an attempt to pull the community back together, by making the game modular, so you can run whatever style you like. There was some mention of being able to use any edition’s material, with just a few tweaks. I can’t see that as being possible, but I’m very hopeful for a more streamlined system that doesn’t feel like I’m playing WoW at my table. I really am looking forward to the playtest material they are going to release, and to giving my feedback…whether they really listen to us in the community being another question…just to see where they are going.
In the end, I am afraid the game itself might hinge on this. If they get it right, D&D continues and grows. If not, it might finally die out, and that would be a shame.
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